


Read Between the Lines

by whimsical_ramblings



Series: Language Barrier [2]
Category: Dragon Ball
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Language Barrier
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-30
Updated: 2015-07-30
Packaged: 2018-04-12 02:59:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 748
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4462922
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whimsical_ramblings/pseuds/whimsical_ramblings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Continuation of the Language Barrier series. Bulma tries to teach Vegeta the basics of reading. And fails.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Read Between the Lines

Bulma dropped a stack of flashcards in front of Vegeta, who was currently leaning against the kitchen counter watching her mother cook. The two of them had been getting along far better than Bulma had ever expected them to; her mother was almost unfazeable, so his outbursts never bothered her, and she always seemed to know what Vegeta was thinking or what he needed, which gave him an excuse not to speak. Still, the needed to learn, and even though Bulma knew that his training for the fight with the androids was important, so was this.  

Vegeta frowned at the cards, pointing at them. “What?” he asked, and Bulma frowned back at him. Vegeta had been here for months, long enough that he could garner what was being said around him without much trouble. But he still refused to say anything more than the bare minimum when it came to actually communicating, despite the fact that Bulma had worked tirelessly with him on grammar and sentence structure.

“They’re flashcards,” she said, spreading them out in front of him. Each of them had different words on them paired with an illustration; some were phrases, some were names of common objects, and some listed different emotions. Vegeta looked relatively unamused.

“For child,” he said.

“Yes, well we all have to start somewhere,” Bulma explained. “I’m sure you didn’t come out of the womb knowing how to fight.”

Something in Vegeta’s face told her he would’ve disputed that statement had he possessed the words to do so, but she ignored it.

“Anyway, maybe seeing something visual along with the word will help you retain it better.”

Bulma was aware that she was, more than likely, beating a dead horse when it came to trying to teach Vegeta anything about reading. As far as she could tell, Saiyins used a completely foreign alphabet, and the last time she’d tried to teach him the Earth equivalent, he’d gotten about halfway through before frustration took over and he’d flipped the table. Bulma might’ve still been angry about it if he hadn’t apologized to her in his own way, seeking her out the following morning and letting her hammer the remaining half of the alphabet into his head. So now he knew the letters, but had no idea how to put any of them together.

“Let’s start with these,” Bulma said when Vegeta made no apparent move to leave, a sign she’d come to learn meant that he was willing to put up with whatever she had in store for him, at least temporarily. She pulled the cards labeled with emotions from the pile and laid them out in front of him. “How do you feel right now?”

“Woman…,” he ground out, obviously unhappy with the direction this lesson was taking. Bulma pressed on anyway.

“Just point to one of them, Vegeta, this isn’t difficult,” she said.

He scowled at her, but pointed to the card labeled ‘angry’, complete with a drawing of a red, angry face.

“Can you say it?” she asked.

When Vegeta continued to glare at her, Bulma assumed that he couldn’t.

“Angry,” she said slowly.

“Awn-gry,” he repeated, drawing out the ‘a’ more than he should’ve.

“Close enough,” she decided. “How about…when you’re training? How do you feel then?”

Vegeta pointed to the ‘angry’ card again, and Bulma sighed.

“Okay, I know that’s not true. You can’t just be angry all the time, can you?”

“Yes,” Vegeta said stubbornly, and Bulma took that as her cue to pack it in.

“Ugh, whatever,” she said, pushing the cards back into a messy pile and leaving them on the counter. “I have more important things to do than listen to you be a jerk.”

She grabbed something from the fridge to drink and left, however when she came back down for lunch a few hours later, she noticed that the cards were gone.

“Hey mom?” Bulma asked. Her mother looked up from the coffee she was drinking at the table. “Did you move those cards I left here earlier?”

“Oh no, sweetie, I didn’t,” she said. “Vegeta took them with him after you left, I believe. It’s so cute how much he wants to learn.”

Bulma felt her mother might have been over-exaggerating a bit with that, but she smiled at the thought anyway, her eyes glancing out the window at the gravity room where Vegeta was probably running himself into the ground. Maybe this was working better than she’d originally thought. 


End file.
